Introduction

As a leading motherboard and graphics card vendor, ASUS has plenty of resources to put into design and development of high-end products that are deviant from reference design, and qualifies as being genuinely in-house. The Republic of Gamers (ROG) line has housed the company's very best in motherboards and graphics cards, targeting consumer segment. Compared to ROG-branded motherboards, while ROG-branded graphics cards are few and far between, ROG does manage to make some extremely desirable limited edition graphics cards.

Seen first at Computex 2011, the ASUS Matrix GTX 580 is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580, that is geared toward overclockers and enthusiasts. The card sports many features for the hardcore overclocking crowd like voltage measurement pads on the card and extensive software voltage control. It is also the first card that comes with solder bridges to enable additional tweaking potential. In terms of cooling, ASUS is using a new variant of their triple slot Direct CU heatsink, which promises maximum cooling performance while still keeping noise levels at a minimum. The card is also backed by a wealth of ASUS ROG-exclusive features such as fan throttle, ROG GPU Tweak, redundant BIOS with Safe Mode fallback, and a huge aesthetic boost for your rig.